and some of my other hobbies too

Friday, December 30, 2011

Continuing from my previous post, the next thing I worked on was the apron bib.

I decided to line the bib with the striped fabric, the same one I was using for the elastic casing at the top. Now that I think about it, I believe I also made the casing strip slightly wider than the pattern. My main guide in deciding how wide, was the width of the elastic I had on hand. I used a one inch wide, 10 inch long strip of non-roll elastic. This elastic is thicker than other types but I figured it would help to keep the elastic from folding in on itself.

I pressed the casing in half lengthwise and the pressed the folded edges to slightly larger than my one inch elastic. I placed the casing around the top edge of the bib and pinned it in place making sure the pins caught both side of my casing. Then I stitched along the very edge of the casing to secure it to the bib.

I inserted the elastic, pressed the folded and turned under edges of the neck ties and attached them to the bib.

Next it was on to the midriff pieces. I didn’t take photos at each step, but the sequence was as follows.

I gathered the bib bottom and sewed it to front midriff piece, then I gathered the skirt top and sewed that to the front midriff also. Next I sewed the inside midriff piece to the bib.

At this point I sewed the waist ties up, pressed them and sewed them to the midriff sides. With the midriff backing piece still loose I remembered to sew on my “Handmade by” tag on the inside.

Now all that was left was to fold and press the seam edges closed. I turned the a few inches of the bottom unsewn edge of the midriff inside out and sewed them together. I pulled everthing back right side out and put a closing top stitching all around the midriff piece

Here’s a look at the inside of the finished apron.

And me modeling it.

I didn’t mention it before, but I made the large size, which isn’t really that large. I like very much how it turned out. There are a few more things I would do differently next time, but I will definitely make this Pretty Ditty apron again.